Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition — John Shaqi
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German EditionWeininger, Otto
Philosophy
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Weininger, Otto
Character; Sex; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics
In view of the admitted close correspondence between matter and mind, we
may expect to find that the conception of sexually intermediate forms,
if applied to mental facts, will yield a rich crop of results. The
existence of a female mental type and a male mental type can readily be
imagined (and the quest of these types has been made by many
investigators), but such perfect types never occur as actual
individuals, simply because in the mind, as in the body, all sorts of
sexually intermediate conditions exist. My conception will also be of
great service in helping us to discriminate between the different mental
qualities, and to throw some light into what has always been a dark
corner for psychologists--the differences between different individuals.
A great step will be made if we are able to supply graded categories for
the mental diathesis of individuals; if it shall cease to be scientific
to say that the character of an individual is merely male or female; but
if we can make a measured judgment and say that such and such an one is
so many parts male and so many parts female. Which element in any
particular individual has done, said, or thought this or the other? By
making the answer to such a question possible, we shall have done much
towards the definite description of the individual, and the new method
will determine the direction of future investigation. The knowledge of
the past, which set out from conceptions which were really confused
averages, has been equally far from reaching the broadest truths as from
searching out the most intimate detailed knowledge. This failure of
past methods gives us hope that the principle of sexually intermediate
forms may serve as the foundation of a scientific study of character and
justifies the attempt to make of it an illuminating principle for the
psychology of individual differences. Its application to the science of
character, which, so far, has been in the hands of merely literary
authors, and is from the scientific point of view an untouched field, is
to be greeted more warmly as it is capable of being used quantitatively,
so that we venture to estimate the percentage of maleness and femaleness
which an individual possesses even in the mental qualities. The answer
to this question is not given even if we know the exact anatomical
position of an organism on the scale stretching from male to female,
although as a matter of fact congruity between bodily and mental
sexuality is more common than incongruity. But we must remember what was
stated in chap. ii. as to the uneven distribution of sexuality over the
body.
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